Tag Archives: Castle

Nice is a popular destination for honeymooners. The views are gorgeous, the beach is alluring, the food is delicious and the shopping is so very French. So it’s not surprising that a few of the people we have met along the way mentioned that they were stopping in Nice as part of their honeymoon. We met a fantastic young newlywed couple from Canada living across the hall from us in our airbnb apartment. It was wonderful to speak English and we enjoyed gushing about various wedding/love stories.

Well, three months in and we finally flew on the Autobahn. Â I say “flew” because there is no way that the wheels of our car were actually touching the road. Â I know that Brian is a good driver, and I have full confidence in his abilities, but that didn’t stop me from squeezing my eyes shut and keeping my hands folded in prayer for the majority of the trip. Â The Autobahn is just the German interstate system and, while some of it is marked down to 130 kph (80 mph) most of it has no speed limit. Â It works out though, because they mainly use trains for the transportation of goods so there are very few trucks on the highway (I think we saw a total of 5 in 400 miles). Â But let me back up, because the purpose of the trip was not to fuel Brian’s childhood dream, but rather a romantic getaway weekend.

Bonnie and I arrived yesterday in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, after some minor travel snafus.Â To start with, we took the S1 instead of the S8, which is the S-Bahn that we always previously took to get to the Munich Airport.Â Both actually go to the airport, but it turns out that the S1 takes a little longer, and you must be on the right part of the train.Â We were not.Â We had jumped on the train, not knowing this, and then when they made the announcement we could barely hear it.Â It turns out you have to be in the rear cars, otherwise the front part of the train disconnects and goes to a different stop.Â We were able to get a bus from the last stop on the train to the airport, but we were cutting it close. Continue reading →

Pouring rain lead to a slow start of day two but Brian and I managed to accomplish almost everything on our list… Albeit a bit wet. Â SchÃ¶nbrunn Palace was stop number one, this was originally a hunting “lodge” for the Hapsburg family.

We’ve been to a few palaces now but this one was especially cool because all of the furnishings were still in place from the early 1700s. Â Although the audioguide was very informative we both wished we had retained a bit more information from our European history classes in high school.

Our trip to Vienna started off with first-class seats onboard a Railjet hurtling through the countryside and along the Alps at 200km/h (124 mph). Â We had planned to arrive in plenty of time before the train departed the central train station in Munich (the Hauptbanhauf), as we had cut it pretty close in the past. Â We arrived 45 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart, only to discover that the train was not there, and the train previous to ours, leaving from the same track, was running late (which was shocking to us, considering the timeliness of the German rail system). Â So, we grabbed some food and hung out in the train station until our train arrived.

Today we â€œtramâ€psed off to Nymphenburg Palace on the west side of the city.Â Traveling by tram was a nice change as we were able to actually see some of the city instead of taking the subway â€“ which has a much less interesting view.Â The Palace was built by the Ferdinand Maria (Bavarian King)Â as a â€œpush presentâ€ for his wifeâ€¦ Continue reading →

A trip to the famous Disney castle was our first excursion outside of Munich.Â The trains proved very easy to navigate, and with the exception of occasionally long lines at the Hauptbahnhof (train station) the whole system is very efficient. The trains are spacious â€“ but make sure you arenâ€™t the last one onboard because a ticket doesnâ€™t confirm that you will have a seat. The rolling green hills looked suspiciously like upstate New York and, except for the manicured bike paths running along the highway and orange-roofed concrete houses, we could have been zipping through Madison or Oneida county. Country is country no matter what country you are in, I guess.